


Ignorance is Blisssssssssss

by Mistressaq



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: AQ Black Girl Magic Challenge 2020, Character(s) of Color, F/F, Pets, Sexual Tension, jaida is bi in this fic bc i say so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24331591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistressaq/pseuds/Mistressaq
Summary: in which they were roommates, Crystal is a Reptile Girl and needs someone to look after her 'clients' when shes away on a work trip.
Relationships: Jaida Essence Hall/Crystal Methyd
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Ignorance is Blisssssssssss

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks to Bell and Magic Mullet for betaing and offering some really helpful and great feedback. and Crazy4Kameron for generally being my cheerleader and betaing as well. i had a lot of fun w this one but i also worked hard to make sure I, the white girl writing black characters, gave them all distinct characterizations that are accurate to their drag personas and not being stereotypical and blah blah i overthink alot but i did have fun with this, which is probably why i was able to finish the draft in a week. that and spring semester being over. 8 week summer semester here i come...

Crystal Methyd is the unquestioned title-holder for the only roommate Jaida has ever been able to stand for the entire lease. Two months ago, her friends had insisted she and Crystal celebrate the renewal of their six month lease together. “You don’t understand, Christine!” Monét had insisted with one hand on Crystal’s knee and the other holding her second glass of wine. “This bitch can’t stand ANYBODY!”

Crystal tried to disguise how she recoiled from being screamed at, but Jaida noticed. And she also noticed how her roommate was doing That Thing with her hands she did when she was nervous later on when talking about how the night had gone. She noticed how Crystal bowed her head and slumped her shoulders when she was being all demure. It was odd; she hadn’t seen Crystal like that since she’d come to interview as a roommate. Her friends had intimidated the string bean, but hadn’t managed to scare her off, and she was grateful for that as well. 

Crystal knew, of course, that Jaida didn’t have a positive view of any of her former roommates. She’d told her so when they interviewed. Jaida's friends had also started to go in on Crystal’s ‘side hustle’ aka The Snake Thing. “It’s really fine,” she’d told Jaida the following day after Jaida had apologised for her friends behavior. 

After all, Crystal’s pets were remarkably more quiet than Rajah's yappy schnauzer or Leo’s cat that cost them the security deposit. Jaida so rarely went into Crystal’s room, she didn’t actually know how many lizards her roommate was keeping at any given time. She was partnered with the humane society and was constantly rehabilitating critters. At one point early on she’d asked Crystal what she fed her pets. 

“I prefer to think of them as my clients,” Crystal had said. Jaida had closed her eyes to roll them. “But they get high quality mixed food, like pellets, plus white mice.”

Jaida remembered looking at her roommate with disgust. “You got a fuckin’ rat farm in there too?”

“Oh no,” Crystal was quick to reassure her. “I have a buddy who breeds them. For a pet store? I just go over and get like, a package of--”

“Aight aight, I get it. You got a supplier.” Jaida couldn’t bear to think of… _uck_ . “Do I _wanna_ know how many rats you gotta buy to feed those critters?”

“Oh, not many at all,” said Crystal. “I usually pick up three at a time ‘cause on average I have three carnivores living with me but the good thing is they only eat like once a week ‘cause their metabolisms are _so_ slow. Plus they don’t make noise really, no barking, no scratching -- well, sometimes there’s scratching…” 

At this point Jaida regretted even asking, as it was clear Crystal was gonna be going on about her lizards for a while. Thankfully, her roommate had some sense of social grace (unlike previous roommates of hers) to wrap up her infodumping by trailing off “and… so yeah.”

Over the months, Jaida had gotten to know Crystal better, and to become more comfortable around the idea of having snakes and lizards living in her apartment. Once, she had to buzz in one of Crystal’s contacts to let him pick up a snake or something. She remembers the guy asked if she minded the fact that her roommate rehabilitated scaly animals. “I mean I did at first,” she’d told him. “But I mostly forget they’re there. They stay in their fish tanks and I don’t gotta look at them or hear them or clean up after ‘em, so.” 

Once, over halfway through their lease, Crystal was gonna be going away for a weekend. She’d told Jaida “I have a friend who’s agreed to come over once or twice and check on them, if you’ll just let him in? Or you could check on them and clean out their water dishes and stuff.”

Jaida had looked up from the magazine she was reading and said “I’d rather let him in.” Crystal had nodded and that had been that.

That had been four months ago.

Tonight, when Jaida knocks on Crystal’s door and pops her head in to ask her if she wants to order from that new Fillipino place down the street, her roommate takes her headphones off and leaves her chair to come talk to her. Jaida takes half a step back.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about something. What are you doing next weekend? Not like this coming up weekend but the one after that.”

“Uh,” Jaida falters. “I don’t think anything. Why?” _This girl is not about to ask me on a date I cannot handle the one roommate I havent hated turning into some weird fuckin sitcom bullshit_ \--

“I actually have a business conference coming up?” Crystal says in her characteristic way of ending sentences as if asking a question. “It’s a long weekend, I’ll be leaving thursday night and coming back probably late Monday and I was gonna call Jove except he’s visiting his dying grandma in Saskatoon so he’s not even in the country and you can totally say no I’m sure I can find someone else if you really don’t wanna--”

 _“Child,”_ Jaida interrupts, shaking her head. “Get to the point.”

“Oh. Uh.” Crystal takes a breath and shrinks a little. “Okay. Would you be okay with looking after the girls for me while I’m away.” The one question she asked was phrased like a straight sentence.

Jaida purses her lips, holding up her pointer finger to keep her roommate from babbling more. Four days. “They eat once a week, right?”

Crystal nods fervently. “And I’ll feed them before I go, I would just need you to check on their tanks, make sure the temperature and humidity is okay, change out their water and make sure the dish is clean…” 

As Crystal listed off the minimal things she would need to do, Jaida is actually pretty down to take care of her pets while she was away. Until Crystal’s tone changes, softening, and she starts to shift from one foot to another. 

“And this part may be a little more than you wanna do so I completely understand if you don’t want to, but every other day I give Anna a special soak -- she came to the shelter with these scabby wounds down her spine and so to keep the wounds clean and stuff she gets a diluted iodine bath every 48-ish hours again I completely understand if you don’t want to, an extra few days without won’t kill her but I would appreciate that if not the bath you’d put this uh, this cream on her scabs to promote healing and stuff--”

God bless her, but Crystal talked too much too fast and skipped around too much. Jaida was fine with fast talking in general-- A’keria and Monét could race with words when they were excited and Jaida had no problem following -- but with Crystal and her weird whiny voice and her ugly wire-rimmed glasses that look like they belong on a grandpa and her slouchy posture just make it hard for her to process what on earth she was saying. She holds up her hand. “Okay stop. _Child,_ you are goin’ way too fast, first of all. Let me catch up. Because until this special-bath-and-rubbin’-lotion-on-snake-scabs thing I was down.” 

Crystal’s face lights up, and she tries to hide it, but her soulful brown eyes glisten like a puppy begging for food. Unlike with dogs however, Jaida had a hard time saying no to these eyes. “So,” she continued. “I’m gonna order us some food, and you’ll figure out in your head how to slow that shit down so I can understand just what I may or may not be signing up for.”

Crystal bounces on the balls of her feet and clasps her hands together under her chin, looking like she wants to hug Jaida but is (thankfully) holding back. She tells Jaida to order whatever she wanted, that it would be her treat just for considering helping her out. Jaida was gonna bring up how she still owed Crystal for helping shoo what’s-his-face from the apartment when one of her one-night-stands wanted to further overstay his welcome. But Jaida wasn’t gonna oppose free food she didn’t have to compromise on.

So, over Chicken Adobo and oxtail soup, Crystal explains in limited detail how to prepare a diluted iodine soak for the injured bull python she referred to as Anna. “I start with like three inches of water in the tub we used as an ice box for that Grammy’s party a while back. Add like four or five drops of the iodine -- it’s got a longer name but it’s iodine -- enough to make it look like tea, and just make sure she stays inside the tub for fifteen minutes.”

“What? Like it can get out?” questions Jaida, raising a brow at the mental image of a snake vaulting the edge of a tub like a cat with a cardboard box. 

Crystal, however, nods. “Absolutely. If you left her to her own devices she’d get out. All you gotta do is guide her head back into the middle. Maybe turn the bin a little to get full coverage-- like dyeing easter eggs!” she snaps, louder than she probably meant.

Jaida picks at her adobo. “M’kay. And I’d do this twice while you’re gone?” Crystal nods. “And when it’s done, just… pick it up? Put it back in its tank?”

Crystal shifts on her stool. “Not exactly yet. Then you put the healing ointment on, and like, don’t skimp-- I’ll show you the whole process when I do it again in a couple days if that helps. More than me just telling you, I know I like to learn hands-on.” 

It does help, when Jaida is able to record the whole process on her digital camera. She’s expecting to just be a camerawoman as Crystal goes about her business with Anna the snake. She pulls Anna out of her terrarium-- which Jaida notices is really pretty actually-- with such confidence, like it didn’t bother her at all that she was holding a _snake_. 

Jaida cringes. “How’d you just pick it up like that?” 

“How do you mean?” Crystal has most of Anna’s length in her palm, and the rest of the snake arched into midair, at the end of which was the snake’s triangular head. Anna’s head seems to be doing a rhythmic bounce, like she was dancing along to a song neither of them could hear. Jaida has started bobbing her head too, without really thinking. 

“Like it’s not a fuckin, hamster or a cat, you can’t just grab it ‘round the middle,” says Jaida. 

“You know, you’re right,” Crystal says. “Hold out your hands,”

“What now?”

Crystal challenges her roommate with a flick of a bushy brow. “I’m not gonna let you drop her. Stick out your hands like I’m handing you an amazon package.”

Hesitantly, Jaida did as she was told. She tried to keep calm like Crystal said to, but that got significantly harder when Crystal placed some of Anna’s length over her hands. The snake feels _weird_ more than anything else. It’s not warm like a guinea pig or as cold as she’d expected. The best comparison she can think of is alligator skin boots. She doesn’t own any animal-skin herself, not because of animal rights reasons, it’s more that it looks tacky in her opinion. However, working for the leading Chicago fashion house, she regularly works with patterns and materials and styles she would never buy for herself. So, holding Anna the bull python as it winds itself around her wrist and starts climbing her like a tree… it’s like if a weird dog’s tail was covered in a snakeskin belt and had a mind of its own. 

She moves Jaida’s arms like a lamp and says something that Jaida immediately regrets mishearing as she was too busy overthinking the last time her roommate had touched her. It wasn’t a Thing, of course not -- she’d handed her plates, the remote… surely other stuff. But more than a hand-off… The snake. The snake in her arms is definitely the reason for her racing thoughts. And why she can’t focus. Yep. That’s it. The snake.

Crystal told her not to move too much, and when she does have to move, to redirect where the snake is going, it’s head bobs and sways even more, even flipping over to reveal the much lighter colored underside. “What’d I do?” Jaida asks, panicked. “I swear I didn’t mean to, I don’t know what I did.” She starts to collect the snake and hand it back to Crystal.

“Yeah, she does that sometimes, it’s not your fault,” explains Crystal. She lets Jaida extricate herself and takes Anna back into her familiar hands, coiling her into more of a puddle. “It’s a neurological dysfunction,” Crystal goes on to say. “You know how some people have like, Spina Bifida or nerve damage and they have like a tremor or balance issues?”

Jaida recalls a family member with Parkinson’s. She nods. 

“It’s like that,” Crystal says. She runs a finger down Anna’s neck. “It’s pretty sad actually, because it affects balance, and you know a snake with this issue can’t climb a tree without falling out, can’t lunge at prey ‘cause they go off in the wrong direction. And the morph-- kinda like the breed I guess-- most ball pythons with the spider morph have this problem to some extent. This isn’t the worst I’ve seen.”

Jaida crosses her arms. “Is there anything you can do for it? Like medication?”

Crystal shook her head. “Just love her, keep an eye on her when I feed her to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.” 

Jaida presses her lips together. She knew her roommate ‘rehabilitated’ animals, but not exactly what that entailed. Now, that head bobble doesn’t seem so cute. She does still want to turn on some club music and watch it dance in time though. That would be cute.

A couple days later, when Ana needs another bath, Crystal makes Jaida do all the work while Crystal instructs from her desk. It wasn’t a situation Jaida was comfortable with, but she had agreed to it, and she isn’t gonna bail now, not after already eating up so much of Crystal’s time. Jaida might be a bitch, and she might be high(ish) maintenance, but she is nothing if not reliable. She also ends up with the added bonus of Crystal paying for groceries and takeout the whole week leading up to her trip. 

“I have my own money,” Jaida points out when placing an order on her phone. “I know you know that.”

“Yeah, but I’m not gonna be around for a few days to go halfsies on stuff _and_ my boss gave me a pre-travel bonus.” Crystal’s voice does That Thing again. The thing that used to make Jaida roll her eyes. 

She rolls them now. “You could save your money, put it towards… something.”

Crystal does a half-smile. “What, like a house I could _maybe_ buy in ten years?”

Jaida shrugs. “I do not know.”

Crystal leans back into their too-soft couch cushions. The subject drops and they have dinner again. Jaida tries to remember when they started having dinner together. They certainly didn’t used to. She thinks she remembers one day when she came home absolutely ragged, and she hadn’t thought it showed that much but Crystal asked if she wanted anything from Culvers. Too tired to think, she’d said no, but Crystal came back with an extra sandwich and fries anyway. 

When Crystal leaves, Jaida is still sleeping, so she leaves a little instruction pamphlet attached to the ‘Chores’ whiteboard. The pamphlet is in bright colors, so she can’t miss it, but the font size and color are easy to read. _When did she do this?_ Jaida wonders as she removes the magnet from the folded piece of paper. _Fucking artists._

“Gurl, you _are_ an artist,” Bob reminds Jaida during their Friday night kiki. They’re crowded around the upscaled coffee table in Jaida and Crystal’s living area, which doubles as the entryway. There’s a TV mounted on the wall, but they aren’t watching it. All the girls are seated in mismatched chairs from Target, Ikea, and Ashley Furniture (on sale). It is probably clear though, that this is no college dorm. There’s a method, a color palette and style in common that ties the room together so it looks less cheap and more eclectic. 

“Did you forget your own self?” Mayhem squeaks, topping off Jaida’s glass for her.

Jaida shakes her head. “I consider myself more of a business woman--” 

Her friends laugh.

“GURL!” Monét half-shouts. “Every fancy event I’ve been to I’m wearing shit _you_ made, gettin’ photographed and shit--”

Jaida protests “I do _an_ outfit every six months, _maybe_.”

Mayhem regards her friend with steady support. “You really should do more, you’re too talented not to.”

“Child...” Jaida cracks a sarcastic laugh. “Fuckin’ commison me then.” She takes a bigger swig than she meant to from her glass and winces.

Mayhem cracks back: “Girl, I teach _drama_ for a living; you know I ain’t got money.”

Jaida does know that. She’s helped out with sourcing costume stuff for Mayhem’s student productions on multiple occasions. Taking trash and sending it to inner city kids so they can pretend to be Othello. It’s a way to help out a Judy in need, plus she gets to feel like a good person for once, not to mention: tax write-off. 

“I said it before I’ll say it again,” Bob says, scooping hummus onto a chip. “I pity the kids who have to learn from you.”

A crumpled up napkin nails Bob square above her left eyebrow, pulling some of the pigment off. Mayhem starts screaming and flailing. Jaida slaps her knee, bending over at the waist and cackling as Monét tries to explain to her cousin why they’re laughing so damn hard all of a sudden. She pulls out her phone and turns the selfie camera on to show where there was a noticeable lack of eyebrow perfectly where Mayhem’s projectile had hit her. Bob stands up and waddles over in her shoes to kneel over Mayhem and play-throttle her, and if it wasn’t Friday night and if their neighbors weren’t go-go boys, they for sure would have gotten a noise complaint. 

“Hey, you know how my roommate has like, snakes and gila monsters and shit?” Jaida says after another hour. There’s a chorus of “yeah”s “uh-huh”s and more than one “gross”.

“Well, Crys’ gonna be gone until Monday, so she aksed me if I’d check, like if I’d check in on ‘em.”

“And you said ‘no’,” Mayhem interrupts. She laughs at her own self.

“No, actually. Actually actually - because there's like nothing to do, you don’t gotta walk ‘em or pick up they shit or get their gross ass hair on the furniture. You know? Like they stay, they stay in the box and I check the thema... The, you know, the temperature.” 

“Thermometer,” Bob cracks, with Monét following suit.

Jaida goes on not even listening to her friends make fun of her. “To make sure they ain’t too hot or too cold or too dry and that’s it!” She motions with her glass.

Bob shakes his head. “Yeah, but with a snake, or a fuckin’... Pascal--”

“Pascal?” questions Mayhem and Monét in chorus. 

“You know-- the lizard. From that Rapunzel movie with the colors.”

Jaida scratches under her eye. “Yeah… a, a iguana. Igloo-ana?”

“IGUANA!” Bob rises from his chair in victory. “THANK you Jaida.”

“Girl, when did you turn into a reptile expert?” asks Monét. 

“I had to,” Jaida defends. “One of those things isn’t gonna die on my watch, no ma’am.”

“But the thing about fuckin, like I was saying before,” says Bob. “You can’t cuddle an iguana. A fucking-- a snake ain’t pitter-pattering up to your ass when you get home from work like a toddler excited you’re home. A scaly-- a reptile don’t give a shit!”

“Exactly,” says Jaida. 

Bob’s face scrunches in confusion. “So _why_ \-- like really, what do you _do_ with a reptile? Really what?”

“You can give it a bath?” Jaida offers. 

“What? The _fuck_? Kinda--” Bob is rising from her seat, getting what his cousin calls ‘aggressively confused’.

Jaida stands. “Look, I can just show you-- c’mon.” She opens the door to Crystal’s room. The first time she did this, it felt wrong, and it still feels wrong now: to be encroaching on her roommate’s private space. But she has permission to check in on the snakes, so fuck it. Her friends follow, mostly sticking around the doorway. They comment on the posters on the walls of bands they’ve never heard of, the old black and white photos of dead celebrities she has in a collage on the side of her PC tower. 

Monét squints and shakes her head. “Man, all these old actors all look the same, I can’t imagine going to the movies before they let black people be on camera.”

“That is not true,” Mayhem fires back. “You cannot tell me Greta Garbow and Lucille Ball look alike.”

Monét’s eyebrows knit together. “Greta Garbow, didn’t she direct the Wonder Woman movie?”

“The fuck do you get Greta Garbow from Patty uh…” Mayhem loses the name and has to hazard a guess. “Johnson?”

Bob takes issue with a different part of his cousin’s statement. “Monét, they wouldn’t even let you in the theater anyway.”

Monét scoffs. “Not like they’d let you in either, girl. None of us was gettin’ in anyplace fun back then.”

Jaida lets her friend’s chatter be background noise as she opens Anna’s tank and tries to figure out where the bull python is in her habitat. She lifts up one of the half-logs and finds her all curled up underneath. Like Crystal had taught her, Jaida scoops the snake up in both hands, holding her securely even though she isn’t as light as she looks. 

“JENKINS!” Mayhem nearly screams. She’s looking at her phone, which she shoves in Monét’s face. “Patty _Jenkins_ is her name. See?”

Monét leans backward to get away from the light of Mayhem’s phone screen. “Why’s your brightness so high, girl? Shit!”

Mayhem brings her phone back to be a foot away from her face. “‘S not my fault I’m a old ass lady. I need it bright so I can see.”

“Don’t tell me you also got the words to be this big.” Bob holds his index finger and thumb an inch apart. 

Jaida perches next to Mayhem on Crystal’s bed. “Let me see,” she says sweetly.

Mayhem takes one look at her friend and hurls herself off the bed in a spin. A shriek comes out of her unlike anything Jaida’s heard before. It’s so theatrical and ridiculous, she starts cackling. Monét leans away, scooting to the edge of the bed, Bob actually backs out of the room before sneaking back in, only to press his back against the wall. Mayhem meanwhile, crawls on all fours to get out of the room and cower behind the sofa. 

“May-May, don’t’cha wanna meet her?” Jaida tucks a finger under Anna’s neck. “She’s real sweet.”

“Why, why, Jaida why, why’s it-- is it supposed to look that gross?” Monét’s voice peaks at the end of her sentence. 

“Ugh” Bob cringes. “What sad animal took a bite out of that thing and how long ago?”

He must be talking about Anna’s wounds. Crystal had said something about the snake being left alone with live rats. Evidently the rats fought back, and hard. 

“Wait, is that a rattlesnake?” Bob asks, pointing to Anna’s tail. 

“No?” Jaida lifts her left arm, where Anna’s back half is draped. She lifts the tail to see what Bob is talking about. “Oh, that’s stuck shed,” she says, as if she’s an expert. 

“Why does it _look like that?!”_ Monét is keeping constant watch over Anna’s movements, as if willing the snake to stay far away from her. “That thing’s head has not stopped moving.”

“It’s a bobblehead snake, Monét,” Bob remarks. “I can’t believe you’re so uncultured not to know that.”

“Also is it-- did it just flip upside-down??” Monét grips the baseboard of Crystal’s bed as if to steady herself.

Jaida lifts her other arm, the one supporting Anna’s front third. The snake’s head has flipped over, and she tries to right it, only for it to go back to the way it was, still wobbling. 

“That thing is belly-up like Finding Nemo,” says Monét with a cackle. 

Bob shakes his head. “Jaida you gotta tell your roommate her snake’s broken.”

Jaida collects Anna’s body into her hands again.

“She’s gonna hate you girl, you broke her snake! I didn’t even know you could do that!” Bob exclaims. 

From the living room, Mayhem's voice calls “GOOD!”

Jaida stands up, curling Anna to her chest, hoping that would stabilize her. “Quit bein’ so mean, guys.”

“How is that mean?” challenges Bob.

“It doesn’t even have _ears,_ Jaida!” Monét cracks.

Bob cackles. “ ‘Stop being mean’-- d’you hear this bitch?”

“Who are you and what have you done with Jaida?” Mayhem calls.

“I dunno May-May,” Monét yells back (despite the fact they’re literally five feet from each other). “But we ‘bout to call a exorcist up in here, d’you think they advertise on Taskrabbit?” She pulls up the app on her phone. 

Jaida gently lays Anna back in her terrarium, whispering an apology. She turns back around. “Can I get new _friends_ on Taskrabbit?” She half-jokes. Her friends take it in stride, back to the comfortable balance they’ve always known. The evening winds down from there, with Jaida more in her thoughts than usual, but not so out of it she forgets to crack a joke here and there and laughs when the others do the same. 

Jaida pays for their Lyft home and dismisses her friends around midnight. The apartment feels too cold and quiet without the others’ loud voices bouncing off the walls. Her body is weary, but her brain is trying to work out why she all of a sudden didn’t find her friends’ jokes funny back in Crystal’s room. She normally would have laughed. She was able to laugh and joke again through the night-- so what was with that bout of seriousness? 

As she scrolls through social media in bed, she sees Crystal is online. She sends off a quick DM: **U get in allright?**

The reply comes within the minute. 

**C: Yeah**

**C: Boss wants me to help him rehearse fr tmr morning**

Her second message is accessorized with a ‘persevere’ emoji

Jaida sends off a **lol rip** and thinks that will be the end of it for tonight. To her mild surprise, Crystal seems to want to keep the conversation going.

**C: So how did girls night go?**

**C: Theres gonna be inside jokes i don't get now**

Jaida frowns. **Aren’t there always inside jokes you don't get?**

**C: Yeah but like i wont get the new ones :(**

Jaida laughs through her nose. **There arent any new ones**

**C: Really?? :)))))**

It’s weird to think of Crystal as missing the weekend kikis. She never used to participate. She’s still pretty quiet during them. She’s been speaking up more and more. Usually she makes a reference no one else gets but they all pretend to, or they laugh at her delivery. It’s just such a nothing occasion for Jaida it’s strange to think of Crystal being sad she missed it. 

Something occurs to her. **Wait isnt it like 3 hours later there?**

**C: Yeah but we slept like the dead on the plane**

**I took a valium i don't remember a thiiiiiiing.** Crystal added a cry-laughing face to the end of her message. 

Jaida smiles. She types **Gud 4 u**. Her eyes are dragging and she’s starting to fall asleep. Crystal can somehow tell over message and tells her to sleep tight and ‘not let the bedbugs bite’ whatever that means. If she was more awake, she could have shot back ‘in your room bed bugs aren't the worst thing that bite.’ 

Instead, she reads the message through bleary vision, smiles, and closes her eyes before falling fast asleep for the next nine hours.

The following day is Saturday. Jaida wakes up, makes herself some breakfast, pops an Advil with orange juice, answers some work emails. She steps into Crystal’s room and checks the temp/humidity gages. She hits the up arrow on the humidity tracker in Anna’s tank. “Hey,” she says into the glass box. Anna is hiding under one of her logs, but Jaida isn’t gonna pull her out this time. _She probably hates me now._ “I know I said I was sorry yesterday,” she tells Anna. “But like… I do mean it. I didn’t know they’d be like that -- actually? I don’t know what I was thinking, it wasn’t a good idea to start with. There was wine and…” 

Jaida locks eyes with her reflection in the glass. “I’m talkin’ to a snake.” She leaves Crystal’s room, closing the door behind her. Today’s the day for Anna’s bath, but Jaida can’t be bothered right now. She talked to a snake like it was a person, and that’s too weird and cringey to be in the same room.

The rest of her day goes about as it would have any other weekend: she goes to the store, does some washing, some chores, mops the four square feet of tile they have (in the kitchen area), vacuums the carpets in the living area and her bedroom -- it doesn’t feel right to vacuum Crystal’s room somehow. She calls her granny, which she hasn’t done since the Sunday before last, and has the same conversation as the last time she called. She’s on the second-to-last episode of a season of TV she started watching three days ago and the sun is setting when she pulls herself upright so suddenly it blacks out her vision for a hot second. _Shitshitshit. Snake. Bath. Now._

As apologetic as Jaida was last night and this morning, when she opens Anna’s tank and lifts her into her arms, the snake doesn’t protest. She merely bobs her head to and fro, going upside-down halfway in between her tank and the bath bucket. Jaida checks her notes and video from last week, just to make sure. But she’s done everything right. Anna’s sideways head inches toward the rim of the bucket and Jaida reaches out to guide her back into the iodine solution. She shifts the bucket, tilting it from one side to the other to make sure all her skin gets some coverage. Like Crystal showed her, she cups her fingers in the water and sends it toward Anna’s neck, which is still trying to be anywhere but the bucket. 

“Prob’ly stings, huh,” Jaida mutters. She looks down in the water and notices some of the skin on the end of her tail has detached, and is hanging like a loose end of ribbon. Jaida feels the urge to grab the loose skin and pull it off like plastic on a new electronic, but knows she’s not supposed to. She did see Crystal drag her fingers along Anna’s skin, not grabbing or using any force, just kinda… petting her? Jaida tries that at the end of Anna’s tail and manages to get it to unravel a little more. But now it’s hanging by a thin piece of skin and Jaida pulls Anna out of the tank at the ten minute mark because if she doesn’t, she won’t be able to help herself from ripping that stuck shed off like a scaly bandaid. 

Jaida places the snake on top of a wad of paper towels, lathers on the healing ointment and lays her back inside her habitat with all her lights and hidey holes and soft dirt and humidity control. “See?” she says to herself. “Didn’t forget about you, did I?” 

Anna wastes no time burrowing under one of her warm logs. That shred of skin breaks on some of her substrate, and Jaida feels strangely satisfied seeing it left behind in the rest of the dirt. Afterwards, Jaida chucks the bathwater down the shower drain and runs the faucet for a minute to help wash it down, and pops the bucket into the dishwasher to run during the night. Lastly, she sends off a couple pictures she took of Anna in the bath to Crystal, just to reassure her friend that her pets are, in fact, being taken care of. 

She does the same thing when she comes home during lunch hour from work the following Monday. And even though she’s wiped and her body craves sleep, Jaida can’t quiet her brain enough to sleep. She lies there quietly, getting what half-rest she can, until she hears rattling in the lock of the front door. Her eyes snap open. _Intruder. No-- shit!_

Jaida rolls out of bed and bounds over to the front door to pull the chain off the door. The knob turns and she jumps back so Crystal will have some space to breathe, but ends up smacking the back of her heel against the coffee table. “Ow, shit! Motherf--” Jaida cuts herself off from her whisper-screaming. 

“You good?” Crystal’s eyes are half lidded. A smaller bag is slung over the top of her rolling suitcase and she has her coat tucked over her free arm. 

“Yeah, I’m,” Jaida winces. She reaches out and takes Crystal’s coat for her. 

“Hey, you don’t have to…”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.” Jaida places the coat on the same peg as Crystal’s favorite sweater. She reaches for the handle to Crystal’s suitcase. “Lemme take that.” Before her roommate has the time to refuse, Jaida has lifted the luggage out of her hand and is halfway to Crystal’s bedroom. 

Too weary from the day of travel for the social grace of refusing, Crystal accepts her help. She plops her carry-on bag on the foot of her bed and sits down hard next to it. 

“I know all you prob’ly wanna do is sleep, but there's ‘tons, sopapillas, other stuff in the fridge I can heat up for you if you want.”

Crystal squeezes her eyes shut and reopens them. She checks the clock on her bedside table, which looks like an 80s toy car. “It’s one am.”

“So?” challenges Jaida. “When’s the last time you ate today? Travel days are a _bitch.”_

Crystal rubs the bridge of her nose. “I had a… sandwich... at lunch. Pretzels on the plane.”

Jaida nods and heads over to the kitchen. She opens the freezer and pulls out the half-empty gallon ziplock bag of tamales from New Years. She breaks off three and runs a paper towel under the faucet to wrap them in. Then she sets the microwave for three minutes. 

Crystal appears in the doorway to her bedroom a minute or so later, having taken off her shoes and let her hair all the way down. “What’re you making?”

“Tamales,” Jaida answers, grabbing hot sauce from the fridge door. “If they’re still cold in the middle just mix it around.” The microwave beeps and she flips them over, resets the timer. 

She pours them both ice waters. When she takes a sip, she watches Crystal’s body mimic hers. The girl ends up downing half the glass in one go. Jaida doesn’t make Crystal talk about her trip, doesn’t ask any questions, doesn't really work to fill the silence. Crystal can have a comfortable silence, and Jaida has always appreciated her for that. 

When the tamales are out of the microwave oven and little puffs of steam are coming out, she uses a butter knife and fork to pull one off the wax paper and onto a paper plate. She hands the other two to Crystal with utensils as well.

It’s like the only words Crystal can remember are ‘thank you’ and she keeps forgetting she’s already said it, scarfing down both of her tamales in the time it takes Jaida to completely finish one. She’s glad to see color return to her friend’s cheeks, some awareness coming back into her eyes. “So the kids were good while I was away?” says Crystal. 

“They were excellent,” Jaida replies. “Some o’ that skin came off Anna’s tail, it was drivin’ me crazy just hangin’ there, you know?”

“Oh I’m _well aware_ of the feeling.” Crystal laughs and nods. “And the others? Burt and Soap? How were they?”

“Who and what now?” Jaida tilts her head, not really processing what Crystal had just said. “There’s the big yellow snake and the flat lizard that looks like a rock.”

Crystal giggles, and it’s at Jaida but she isn’t mad about it. She fully didn’t know the other ones had names. Crystal leads her back into the bedroom, where the shelving unit on the wall holds all three converted fish tanks. There’s Anna on the bottom, with her long body stretched out and pressed up against the glass. There's the Rock Lizard in the middle, and on the top shelf at about Jaida’s shoulder is the bigger, fatter yellow snake. Crystal points to the lower right hand corner of the middle tank, where there is a taped-on picture of a white man with eyebrows as bushy as his 80s porn ‘stache. It doesn’t look like he has any eyes. 

“Jaida, meet Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds, this is Jaida.” Crystal motions in between the two of them. “Sorry for the late introduction.”

Jaida stares at Crystal. 

“You have no idea who that is, do you?” Crystal says through a grin.

Jaida shakes her head, slowly.

Crystal goes back to her reptiles. “Uhh, who else? Bert Reynolds, Anna Conda--”

 _“Child,”_ Jaida holds up a hand. “Say that again.”

“What?”

Jaida closes her hand into a fist in the air. “I… I need you to say what you just said again because I know I did _not_ just hear…”

Crystal finishes for her. “...That Anna’s full name is Anna Conda?”

Jaida grabs Crystal by the wrist and squeezes. “You did not, you are _not,_ girl it’s not two in the goddamn morning I am not hearing for the first time you named these fucking snakes _Burt Reynolds_ and Anna Conda!”

Crystal beams mischievously. “The blue-tongued skink is called Soap!”

Jaida points to the door, wheezing. “Get. Get out. It’s over. You can’t stay here anymore. Get your shit and get out.”

Crystal is cracking up and so is Jaida. She takes Jaida's hands in her own and pushes back. She shakes her head and her smile is deafening. “Nooope, we just signed another lease! You can’t throw me out, not happening.” 

Jaida fervently shakes her head, cackling, the corners of her eyes getting wet. 

“We are _in it_ , babey!” Crystal insists through laughter. “For another six months, we’re bringing in another new years!”

“Me and you and,” Jaida wheezes. “And Burt Reynolds, and Anna Conda--” she can’t even breathe. “And fucking!! SOAP!” The last word comes out as a squeak and both women fall to the carpet laughing like people can only laugh after funerals or deadass sober at two am.

After they’re finally able to breathe again, what must be a half hour later, Jaida tells Crystal she should let her get to sleep, “but I have to confess something first.”

“Mmmmokay?” Crystal looks reticent, but in good enough of a mood to give her the benefit of the doubt. 

“So, like, I was thinkin’ how I was kinda naive before you made me do this, because Friday night the girls started making fun of Anna in like her head and her scabs and shit and like, I would’ve laughed too but I couldn’t ‘cause I knew-- you told me why it wasn’t funny and I couldn’t un-know she got eaten by rats and I can’t un-know her nerves are fucked up and that she’s basically disabled and she’s had such a rough life. And like, if I didn’t know that, I would’ve been just like them and I missed bein’ able to? Laugh?” 

Crystal rested her head on her fist and nodded, listening.

“Like, ‘cause I knew that like, people hit their dogs or whatever, but I mean I’d never thought of like… abused fuckin, snakes and shit-- you just don’t think about it. I’m almost thirty, already jaded at the world, ‘Jaded Jaida’ and you went and found a new ugly in the world I hadn’t thought about yet.” She pauses. “So I guess what I’m trynna say is: fuck you.”

Again they devolved into giggles. Crystal hugs her knee. “I get what you mean, though. I do. There’s sometimes times where like, people say something and it’s not ignorant but it’s uninformed I guess? I dunno, but it’s like you said. And depending on the situation you can either educate someone, like if you’re in private like we were. But if I’m in public and people are joking and having a good time and I don’t think the joke is funny, I’m just gonna be quiet you know? ‘Cause partly I don’t wanna ruin their fun, but also no one is gonna be convinced that way. It’s all about how you approach things.”

“Yeah,” Jaida breathes. They stayed like that for another little while, Jaida leaning up against a dresser and Crystal against her computer desk. Eventually, Jaida notices Crystal yawn and she decides to get up and let her weary roommate get some shuteye. As she goes to leave, Crystal speaks up.

“Thanks again,” she says. “In case I haven’t said it enough.”

Jaida merely half-waves in response, gently closing Crystal’s door behind her.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> me: why are there NO other blackgirlmagic entries?!  
> also me: maybe bc it was officially announced a week ago and the cutoff date is in 2 months  
> ...  
> i just want content, yall. so i did what im apparently best at-- writing what i wanna read.


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